Postdoctoral Scholar – Wildfire Recovery and Sustainable Building Practices

Position Description

The Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine invites applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar position focused on wildfire recovery and sustainable building practices in disadvantaged and low-income communities in California. The project will partner with community-based organizations to design and implement ground-truthing (GT) methodologies in order to assess existing building stock data based on community-led GT audits and to document community rebuilding priorities through surveys and GT engagement events. Results will strengthen the capacity of disadvantaged and low-income communities impacted by wildfires to incorporate sustainability and wildfire resilience goals into rebuilding and recovery efforts by reducing embodied carbon in the building stock and by reconstructing with fire-resilient materials and building designs. This position offers an opportunity to impact disaster recovery policies at state and local levels by utilizing GT methodologies to connect technical analyses derived from traditional research with the local, expert knowledge of residents and organizations based on their lived experiences.

Responsibilities

• Coordinating project logistics and scheduling
• Conducting spatial analysis of wildfire-impacted areas
• Developing a building stock database for selected study areas
• Co-developing GT research methodologies
• Designing and implementing a resident rebuilding priorities survey
• Supporting the co-development of engagement processes with community organizations
• Overseeing the GT data collection components during activities run by community partners
• Analyzing wildfire recovery and sustainable building practices
• Supporting reporting requirements and knowledge sharing

Qualifications

• This position requires a Ph.D. in urban planning, public policy, environmental planning or engineering, architecture or urban design, social ecology, or a closely related field.
• The ideal candidate will bring a combination of the following:
• Familiarity with quantitative, qualitative, and spatial research methods, including community-engaged research designs
• Strong organizational skills and project management experience
• Experience with community-engaged research, including relationship building and co-development and implementation of collaborative research and engagement
• Strong written communication skills and contribution to peer-reviewed publications

Pay and Schedule

This is a full-time, 33-month appointment, with the possibility of renewal subject to performance and funding availability. The start date for this appointment is negotiable but is anticipated to be September 2026. An in-person appointment is strongly preferred.